By Shin-ichiro Inoue, and Toshinori Kinoshita Light-induced stomatal responses were first reported 23 by Francis Darwin (1898). Stomata open in response to light, including blue and red light (Shimazaki et al., 2007).  Red light induces stomatal opening via photosynthesis in the mesophyll and guard…

PLOS Computational Biology has a series of "Ten Simple Rules" articles. Here is one for undergraduate researchers, "Ten simple rules to make the most out of your undergraduate research career" by Megan Yu and Yu-Min Kuo Here are the rules, read the article for elaboration Rule 1:…

May 2017, MIT Technology Review by James Temple Reinventing Rice for a World Transformed by Climate Change UC Davis plant geneticist Pamela Ronald wants to create rice varieties that can survive in harsher conditions, including more frequent droughts. "Pamela Ronald stands in front of two rows of…

Once seen as potential sequencing artifacts, long, non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs, >200 nucleotides) have gained recognition as important regulatory factors. LncRNAs are transcribed from a variety of genomic locations (introns, intergenic spaces, and coding regions) from the sense or antisense strand (reviewed…

Why we're writing What We're Reading and how you can contribute.... (more)   Nature Outlook Supplement: Food Security (OA) Nature has published an Outlook feature on the topic of Food Security with the following overview articles, all useful for teaching: Food security,   Nutrition:…

Correspondence: Discussion about the US National Academies GE crop report ($) A series of letters has been published in Nature Biotechnology on the topic of the US National Academies report Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects. From Dec 2016, US National Academies report misses…

Cross-posted from Kelsey Wood with permission. Kelsey is a PhD student at U.C. Davis. How to make a DNA bracelet, from any organism and any gene! I study plant-pathogen interactions, so I chose to make a sequence from a wild tobacco gene that is important for plant defense against pathogens. What…